In the mid-1920s, many young Americans flaunted long-established Victorian culture.Women were voting, illegal booze was flowing through speakeasies, and art had becomeabstract. Traditionalists in the South responded with a wave of religiousrevivalism. Journalists seized upon one particular court trial in Tennessee, for itexemplified this struggle between religious tradition and modernity. Who would win?In the summer of 1925, a high school biology teacher named John Scopes stood trial inDayton, Tennessee. He was charged with violating the state’s “Butler law”, whichforbade teaching the theory of evolution.

Scopes’ personal guilt mattered little, as the trial was engineered from the start. Scopesand several townspeople (who wanted tourism) had responded to a Chattanooganewspaper ad submitted by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ad announced thatthe ACLU was “looking for a Tennessee teacher who is willing to accept our services intesting [the Butler law] in the courts. Our lawyers think a friendly test case can bearranged without costing a teacher his or her job... All we need now is a willing client.”It was expected that regardless of the trial’s outcome, Scopes would keep his job. Thetrial’s significance lay in the conflict between religious and academic values. Thedefense’s goal went beyond acquitting Scopes; they aimed to obtain a Supreme Courtdeclaration that laws forbidding the teaching of evolution were unconstitutional.Two of the country’s most famous attorneys faced off in the trial. William JenningsBryan, a three-time Democratic presidential nominee, was prosecutor. By 1925, Bryanand his followers had already introduced legislation in fifteen states to ban the teaching ofevolution. Clarence Darrow, who represented the defense, had achieved nationwide famethrough an exciting murder trial the previous year. The lawyers were well-matched, andprosecutor Bryan declared that “the contest between evolution and Christianity is a duelto the death.”Meanwhile, the town of Dayton prepared a carnival atmosphere. Streets filled withthousands of visitors, children’s lemonade stands, performing chimpanzees, and vendorsof monkey dolls. The trial was moved outside, for people feared the crowded courtroomfloor would not support its audience. WGN radio set up new infrastructure, allowing thisto be the nation’s first court case heard live over the radio.Bryan eventually lost control of his case. Darrow, the defense attorney, subjected himpersonally to a cross-examination about the Bible and science. Ultimately, Bryanadmitted believing that our world was not completed in a week, but was created over aperiod of time that “might have continued for millions of years”. The judge, however,had this testimony expunged from the record.John Scopes was ultimately found guilty of teaching evolution and was fined $100. Thisis what the defense had requested; the issue could now be tackled by a higher court.Scopes then delivered his only statement of the trial, declaring:Your honor, I feel that I have been convicted of violating an unjuststatute. I will continue in the future, as I have in the past, to opposethis law in any way I can. Any other action would be in violationof my ideal of academic freedom--that is, to teach the truth asguaranteed in our constitution, of personal and religious freedom. Ithink the fine is unjust.The Tennessee Supreme Court heard the Scopes case in 1927. The court voted to upholdthe Butler law, but they dismissed Scopes’ earlier $100 conviction on a technicality.Tennessee overturned the Butler law in 1967.Clearly, the Scopes trial did not end the debate over teaching evolution. However, thenational radio broadcast, complete with the lawyers’ debates over religion and science,seems to have influenced voters nationwide. Of the fifteen states with anti-evolutionlegislation pending in1925, only two enacted laws restricting the teaching of evolutionarytheory.The Scopes trial remains popular in American history classrooms. The lawyers’ debatesconcern key conflicts between science and religion, faith and reason, and individualfreedoms versus majority rule.